Kashmir still on SC's agenda: UN

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations Tuesday set the record straight when it declared that the Jammu and Kashmir dispute remains on the UN Security Councils agenda, while rejecting as inaccurate that it has been removed from the list of unresolved issues. Some articles today on Kashmir are inaccurate, UN Spokesman Farhan Haq said, referring to those reports, especially in Indian media. He said the latest list of matters the Security Council is seized of continues to include the agenda item under which the Council has taken up Kashmir which, by a decision of the Council, remains on the list for this year, the spokesman added. Earlier, a spokesman for the Pakistan Mission clarified that Pakistans Acting Ambassador Amjad Hussain Sial, in his speech to the General Assembly on Friday, November 12, had referred to the omission of Jammu and Kashmir dispute in a statement by the President of the Security Council, and not from the Councils Annual Report - as reported in a section of press. The agenda item entitled, 'India and Pakistan Question, which covers Jammu and Kashmir dispute, is duly mentioned in the Annual Report of the Security Council and is also present on its agenda, Spokesman Mian Jehangir Iqbal said in a statement. In his statement, the 15-member Councils President for the current month, British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, while presenting the Annual Report to the 192-member assembly, did not mention the Kashmir dispute in the context of unresolved long-running situations, despite the fact decades-old issue is included in the Annual Report. We understand this was an inadvertent omission, as Jammu and Kashmir is one of the oldest disputes on agenda of the Security Council, Ambassador Sial remarked, after Ambassador Grants statem-ent. Meanwhile, Pakistans UN Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon, who is on a visit to Pakistan, said there was no question of the Kashmir issue being dropped from the Councils agenda. The Security Council Report in its annexure is explicit, he said in a statement. The President of the Security Council, the Permanent Representative of the UK, is amply clear on the subject and is cognizant of the matter. I would request all concerned not to speculate unnecessarily upon the subject.